


Underworld Magics

by prettyboydotexe



Series: Sun Angels [6]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, Gen, Happy Nico, M/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-27 20:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12088344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettyboydotexe/pseuds/prettyboydotexe
Summary: "Will?""Yeah, babe?""She's crying, what do I do?""Comfort her?""How?""Hugs are usually a good way to start.""What?""You'll be fine, just pretend she's Hazel."





	Underworld Magics

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like there's not enough fluffy Nico fics in the world. Just let him be happy, dammit  
> This isn't really connected to anything in Sun Angels, it's just a (loosely) Solangelo oneshot

It was Capture the Flag day, and therefore, the infirmary was packed. Will hadn’t been able to sit down all day, bustling from one curtained off area to the next, setting broken bones, administering ambrosia, and stitching up several maimed persons. On top of that, he had a new camper to check over. The poor thing was carried in by a very traumatized satyr, having had to quiet literally tug-of-war the poor thing out a monster’s grasping hands.

He was just finishing up securing the girl’s sling when there was a slight commotion outside, followed by some cursing in the familiar voice of his oldest sister.

“I’ll be right back,” he told the girl, Sonya, patting her hair gently as he stood from his spot on the edge of her cot.

“Hey, Will, we got another one,” Lydia announced, hauling a stretcher through the doorway with the aid of a very sheepish looking Connor Stoll. On it sat Clarisse, a look of fury on her face so intense Will would have cowered a little had he not already dealt with two exposed femurs and a particularly nasty broken nose in the past hour. He would not let Clarisse’s legendary temper throw him, he already had too much to deal with today.

“Put her over here,” he motioned for one of the few empty cots and moved to help them move her over, forcing her to lay still twice when she tried to move herself. She had a knife sticking out of her shoulder, right where the two bones met on top. There was very little blood around it, probably contained by the blade imbedded there. “Tell me what happened?”

“This asshole stabbed me-”

“Clarisse tackled me trying to get to Travis-” the two started at the same time, Lydia groaned across the room as she put the stretcher away. Will held up his hand, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Just stop. Lydia?”

“These two won’t stop bickering, but one of the Hecate kids told me Clarisse started going after Travis when he let some blue team past him to their flag. Connor tried to help his brother, Clarisse went forward, tripped, and yeah,” Lydia shrugged, already retrieving a pair of vinyl gloves for both herself and Will. The knife had to come out after all.

“Alright, let me get someone to watch Sonya for me and we’ll get started.”

“Will?” he looked up from where he was trying to find another one of his siblings for Sonya, grinning when his gaze landed on Nico. Nico often came by while Will was supposed to be taking his lunch break, either to bring him food or chastise him for overworking himself like the hypocrite he was. Usually it was both, today being no different. Before the raven could get a word out about Will’s schedule, he stopped him.

“Hey, babe, hi, listen,” the blonde placed his hands on Nico’s shoulders, looking his boyfriend in the eye. “I need you to make yourself useful.”

“I… what?” Nico asked, looking both terrified and confused by the statement. They’d established early on in their relationship that Nico, while he could feel death from a mile away, he was shit at preventing it. At least from a healing standpoint.

“I have three broken arms, Clarisse still has Connor’s knife in her shoulder because I can’t take it out yet or she’ll bleed on my floor, and I have two campers who can’t remember why they’re here.”

“Okay…”

“I need _you_ , my dear, sweet death boy, to sit with Sonya and make her feel better.”

“What?” he looked alarmed, to say the least, but Will simply wasn’t having it. With an arm around the shorter boy’s shoulders, he directed him to Sonya’s cot, and shoved him into the wicker chair next to it. “Who’s Sonya?”

The girl was young, younger than most of the kids they brought in under normal circumstances, only about five or six. Her auburn hair still had a few leaves and twigs in it, and her left arm was in a sling, having been dislocated during her rescue. Given the age and the nature of her retrieval, Will expected she’d be a child of one of the more important gods or goddesses. She was unclaimed, so only time would tell.

“Nico, this is Sonya. Clover brought her in today from Seattle, why don’t you tell her about Camp? Sonya, this is my boyfriend, Nico. He’s going to keep you company while I take care of some things,” Will introduced the two, clasping his hands together in front of him, squeezing them so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I’ll be back in just a few-”

Nico grabbed his arm as he turned to leave, his look of mild alarm having turned into full blown panic.

“William! You cannot leave me with her! I don’t know the first thing about children!” he hissed, clutching at Will’s scrubs with one scarred fist.

“Please, Nico! It’ll only be for a little while,” Will practically begged, stopping to take a deep breath. “I’m begging you. Just let me get Clarisse settled, and I can find someone to take over. Please? I really can’t leave her alone.”

Nico seemed to pause for a second, turning something over in his head. He looked Will over, his wrinkled scrubs, the tight look around his eyes, the way his usually sun kissed skin seemed a little bit gaunt in the infirmary lights. He sighed, straightened Will’s shirt with both hands, then nodded.

“Yeah, alright. But just for a few minutes, okay?”

“You’re the best!” Will grinned, sweeping a startled Nico into a hug. Even after years of having friends, years after the war, years of _dating,_ the son of Hades was still startled by affection, even more so in a public space. “Just grab me if you need anything, alright? I’ll be right over there.”

“Okay…” Nico turned back into Sonya’s room, his arms crossed over his chest. Even after Will had forced him to spend his mandatory time in the infirmary for his Orion injuries, the scars still lingered. Several jagged, silvery raised scars spiraled down his arms from mid-bicep to the backs of his hands, even into his palms in places, where Nico had literally ripped himself out of the werewolf’s claws. It’d taken ages for Will to convince him he didn’t need to cover them up all the time, wearing long sleeves in the middle of summer wasn’t good for him.

Will went back to Clarisse and Lydia, his sister having run Connor off so they could work in peace. The daughter of Ares was still harping about unruly Hermes kids under her breath as Lydia prepped her, acting as if she didn’t have a knife sticking out of her shoulder.

It only took a few minutes to get the knife out, after a lot of ambrosia and compression to keep the blood in, Will got started stitching her up in neat little lines. The sound of moving curtains interrupted him, and he didn’t look up until Lydia greeted Nico behind him.

“Will.”

“Yeah, babe?” he hardly glanced up, tongue stuck between his teeth as he threaded Clarisse’s shoulder back together so the ambrosia could do its thing.

“She’s crying, what do I do?” Nico’s voice had taken on the tight lisp it did when he was stressed, or trying to subtly shadow travel away. Will had to turn around for a full second to make sure he wasn’t trying to run away.

“Comfort her?”

“How?”

“Hugs are usually a pretty good way to start.”

“What?”

“You’ll be fine, just pretend she’s Hazel.”

“Dammit, Solace,” Will heard footsteps a few seconds later and assumed Nico had gone to follow his advice, leaving him with silence once more to finish up his current task.

 

 

“That should do it,” Will said, standing up and patting his scrubs down with both hands. Clarisse’s shoulder was stitched up, disinfected, and bandaged to the best of his ability, which was, in his humble professional opinion, hospital standard.

“Thanks,” Clarisse may have been gruff and aggressive, but she was always relatively cooperative when it came to being in the infirmary. It was the only place she acknowledged that someone else might know better than her.

“I’m gonna keep you here for the next couple hours, just to make sure nothing heals weird or anything, but you should be good to go by dinner,” Will noted her regimen on his clipboard. The entire sheet was covered in notes and comments about the various campers filling his infirmary at the moment. “You may feel a bit stiff for a few days, but the scarring’ll be minimal. Just don’t yank it too hard for the next week and there shouldn’t be any issues. You know the drill.”

Clarisse nodded, and Will left her in Lydia’s care so he could go check on Nico and Sonya. It’d taken longer than he’d anticipated to get that knife out of her shoulder, and he hoped neither Nico or Sonya were too distressed.

When he got to Sonya’s cot, however, neither seemed to be distressed, or even slightly agitated. Sonya was curled up on her pillows, with Nico next to her sitting cross legged. He had covered the windows nearest the cot and commandeered the lamp from Will’s desk to cast shadows on the curtains surrounding them. What looked like a small rabbit hoped around the circle of light created by the lamp, directed by Nico’s hands.

“Can you make her a friend?” Sonya whispered, leaning towards the older demigod and reaching for the rabbit. Her hand passed right through it, but instead of dissipating, the visage wavered slightly and doubled itself, creating another identical shadow rabbit next to it. The little girl gasped in delight. “How did you do that?”

“Magic,” Nico said simply, a small, almost imperceptible smile on his face.

Will stepped away from the curtain then. They’d be okay for a little while longer while he made his rounds.

 

 

It became a thing after that, Will asking his boyfriend to please watch the kids for him so he could finish up before lunch. The camp had been getting new campers in droves lately, all of them various ages but staying in the younger range. He hoped the sudden surge in demigods didn’t spell war in their future, two was enough for one lifetime, and Will wasn’t confident in their ability to survive another one so soon. They were all recovering, years later.

“Make a duck next!” a little boy demanded, his legs splayed out awkwardly in front of him, one wrapped tightly to keep it set and immobile while the nectar ran its course.

“A duck and a fox, really?” Nico asked, but obliged anyway. The shadowed fox nosed at the duck curiously before the two animals began to chase each other around the circle of light created by the flash light held by the newest camper. Will had begun to slip one in with each child he left with Nico, and if the older boy noticed, he didn’t say anything.

“Hey, how’d you get that?” the boy asked, prodding one of the more prominent scars spiraling down Nico’s forearm with one short finger.

“I… I got in a fight with a werewolf.”

“That’s silly, werewolves aren’t real.”

“Neither are Greek gods, but here we are,” Nico countered. Will quietly contained his chuckles from behind the curtain. He’d probably need to intervene soon, before the older teenager got too agitated.

“Will I get in a fight with a werewolf?”

“Probably not. That’s not really part of the curriculum here at camp. Maybe a _empousa_ or two, but…”

“What’s that?”

“Think vampires with fire hair.”

“That sounds awesome!” The boy’s eyes lit up like a Christmas tree, and Nico cringed, the shadow animals faltered.

“They really aren’t.”

That was Will’s que to call Nico for lunch, stepping graciously down the makeshift hallway to he wouldn’t get caught eavesdropping.

“Took you long enough,” Nico grumbled, not looking nearly as cross as he was trying to sound.

“Sorry, you know how Cecil can be,” Will shrugged, grinning as he threw an arm over Nico’s shoulders. Despite having grown a couple inches since his initial decision to stay at camp, he was still a good half a foot shorter than his boyfriend. “How’s Victor doing?”

“He seems to be taking things well, given his… circumstances.”

“That’s good, I was worried about how he’d take the whole ‘polytheism being reality’ thing, coming from a Catholic household and all.”

“You know I came from a Catholic household, too, you know,” Nico reminded him, begrudgingly accepting Will’s placating kiss to his temple with only a slight blush.

“Yeah, but you also spent a few decades in the limbo playing dated videogames, so,” Will shrugged, Nico just shook his head.

“Shut up, Solace.”

 

 

Though the younger campers seemed to flock to Nico whenever they had a chance, they never asked him to use his ‘magic’ where others could see. Will vaguely wondered if Nico asked them to keep it a secret, until the first time he couldn’t make it to the infirmary while there was a new camper.

He’d been commandeered by Chiron for a majority of the day to help Percy teach a swordsmanship class and do a run on the lava wall while Jason was visiting New Rome for the weekend. Will hadn’t seen hide nor hair of his boyfriend since breakfast, and was rightfully surprised to see a familiar head of curly dark hair sitting by the fire when he arrived.

“I thought you hated these things,” Will commented as he sat down next to him, his long legs stretching out in front of him.

“I can go, if you don’t want me here?” Nico suggested, acting as if he meant to stand up. Will grabbed his hands and sat him back down, laughing quietly. Nico may have meant it at some point, perhaps, years ago, but now he was in a better place. He was realizing that he had friends, and that they really did want him around.

“No, no, I’m just surprised is all. I haven’t seen you all day.”

“Percy kept asking for a rematch,” he explained, nodding to the son of Poseidon sitting across the fire, smiling and talking with Annabeth. As if he heard mention of his name, Percy looked right at them.

“Will, tell your boyfriend to stop cheating in class,” he demanded, pouting like an insolent child. “We agreed on no powers.”

“Nico?”

“I didn’t use any powers, Jackson, and you know it,” Annabeth was hiding a smile behind her hand, patting Percy’s knee with the other. “It’s not my fault you can’t block for shit.”

“In broad daylight. Yes.”

Nico huffed an exasperated laugh, used to Percy’s antics by then. Will was just glad they could interact normally, given their history. He supposed that was the biggest indication that Nico was healing.

Slowly, other campers began to filter into the circle, taking seats around the fire and passing out s’more supplies. Will roasted marshmallows for the two of them while Nico seemed to stare into the flames, lost in some thought or another. He didn’t mind the silence, having learned that Nico, even when he was happy, was just quiet by nature.

“Nico!” the teen jumped when a high-pitched voice called his name, and they both turned their heads to see Sonya standing in front of them, one hand on her hip, the other holding the hand of a taller girl no older than nine. The taller girl looked nervous and kept glancing away from them. Will recognized her as Sara, the camper he had evaluated earlier. Aside from some scrapes and bruises, and a healthy dose of shock, she’d been in relatively good shape for someone who just had their world flipped upside down. “Show her your magic.”

“Your what?” Percy asked, having overheard from across the fire. A quick glance around told Will that pretty much everyone in attendance had overheard and aimed their gaze in their direction. A few of the younger campers got up from their cabin seats and gathered around excitedly. Sonya stared at Nico expectantly.

Nico crouched down in front of Sara, smiling at the nervous girl gently.

“What’s your name?”

“Sara…” she murmured, not meeting his eyes. The fire cast bright shadows across their skin and the dirt around them.

“Hello, Sara. My name’s Nico, it’s nice to meet you. Is this your first day?” A nod. “Why’re you nervous, _cucciolo_?” she only shook her head. “Well, let’s see if I can help, yeah? What’s your favorite animal?”

Sara seemed to ponder this for a moment, fiddling with the hem of her shirt as she did. Her other hand was still held in an iron grip by Sonya.

“I have a pet cat; her name is Daisy.”

“A cat named Daisy? She sounds very cute. Let’s sit down here, I wanna show you something,” Nico said gently, resolutely ignoring the way the entire camp seemed to watch them. He sat with her in the center of the group of children that had formed. “Guys, try not to sit in front of the fire. We need light for this,” he reminded the little ones, motioning for them to sit around him. “Let’s see…”

This was the first time Will got to see Nico start his trick, usually only seeing it just as he was finishing up. The older demigod held his hand into the light, creating a large black blob in the center. The other shadows seemed to flow towards it, until he took his hand away and the swirling mass remained there without him. He stared at it, the concentration plain on his face, as it began to take shape.

First came the ears, then the tail as it elongated and grew four little legs. A small, shadowy cat sat in the center of their little circle, appearing to be looking at Sara despite not having any discernible eyes.

“See? I told you he was magic,” Sonya boasted proudly, sitting next to an elated looking Sara. The girl was entranced as Nico had the cat begin to run around the circle so all the gathered kids could see. It didn’t take long for the other kids to shout suggestions, different animals to add and tricks for them to do. Some even made shadow puppets of their own, though not as elaborate as Nico’s, with their hands.

“Are you feeling better?” Nico asked Sara, voice quiet amongst the excited chattering around them. Will saw the girl smile and nod enthusiastically, waving her hand around so the shadow cat wove around her shadow as if it were being pet. “That’s good. I’m glad.”

Will stood up from his seat and approached his boyfriend, slipping into the circle next to him when he found an opening. Nico leaned into him, still staring at his little puppets as they played and danced in the firelight. Will kissed his temple.

“I told you you’d be fine,” he murmured into his hair, wrapping his arm around the other’s shoulders. Nico huffed and failed to hide his smile.

“Shut up, Solace.”

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @prettyboydotexe


End file.
